![]() It’s a brand-new claim shoehorned into the argument to move it away from the debate about whether a food’s temperature classifies it as a dessert or not, and it’s completely irrelevant.įallacies of relevance are a subcategory of informal fallacies, and the red herring fallacy is part of this subcategory. The red herring in this argument is the last sentence, the claim that salad’s lack of sweetness is what disqualifies it from being a dessert. But salad isn’t sweet, so it can’t be a dessert. If a food is cold, then it is a dessert.We know it can be a bit tricky, so here’s an example of a red herring statement using the same content as our non-sequitur example above: Rather than the statement being structurally unsound (like in our example above, where we reach an illogical conclusion by following the formula of “if A is true, then B is true”), the content presented in the statement doesn’t logically fit into its structure. Informal fallacies are statements that are flawed because they lack a logically grounded premise. The red herring fallacy falls into the other category, informal fallacies. Take a look at this example of the non-sequitur fallacy: For example, the non-sequitur fallacy, the type of fallacy where the conclusion does not logically follow the premise, is a formal fallacy. Formal fallacies are statements that are flawed because the structure of the statement itself is flawed. Logical fallacies can be broadly divided into two categories: formal and informal fallacies. But for the purposes of this post, we’ll be focusing on the red herring fallacy as it’s used in rhetoric. This isn’t always for nefarious purposes-sometimes, it’s a literary strategy used to keep readers in suspense. The purpose of a red herring is to distract the reader or listener from the actual issue being discussed in a conversation or piece of writing. The first instance of the term being used figuratively dates to 1807, when political journalist William Cobbett used it to critique the English press’ coverage of Napoleon’s defeat. In 2008, etymologists Gerald Cohen and Robert Scott Ross published their research that showed that the earliest references to the phrase came from a historical method for training horses, not dogs, to be comfortable with the chaos and competing smells that follow a hunting party. For a long time, the common explanation for this phrase was that a kipper, or a cured herring that becomes pungent and takes on red-colored flesh from the curing process, was used to train hunting dogs to follow scent paths. ![]() Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly What is the red herring fallacy?Ī red herring is a misleading statement, question, or argument meant to redirect a conversation away from its original topic.Ī red herring is not an actual species of fish.
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